Free tool
Wānaka wedding timeline planner
Here, the light sets the schedule. Choose your month and the planner works the day backwards from sunset.
Short answer
Fix the sunset moment first, then portraits, then the ceremony, then getting ready. Planning forwards from a start time is what leaves couples photographing in the dark in April.
Portraits on Coromandel Peak. Photograph: Wonder Weddings.
Build your running order
Sunset and golden hour are calculated for Wānaka township. The durations between events are common planning allowances, your own suppliers' timings always win.
Loading the interactive version. The guidance below applies either way.
What this assumes
- Light times are calculated for Wānaka township on the 15th of the month you select, New Zealand local time.
- Mountains to the west shade many sites earlier than official sunset, so treat these as the outer limit.
- Gaps between events are planning conventions, not any supplier's stated timings.
- Nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
Indicative only. Confirm hair and makeup, travel, catering and finish times with the suppliers and venue actually working your day.
Advice
Where timelines usually go wrong
Travel is underestimated more than anything else. Gravel roads, gates, parking and a group that will not move quickly all add up, and the mountains do not wait.
Build one deliberate empty slot into the afternoon. If nothing runs late, you get a quiet twenty minutes together, which is not a bad outcome either.
Talk to a planner
Timelines work better when a person who has run the day builds them. A planner can do that with you.
Planning by Wonder Weddings, an affiliated brand.
Want your real timeline built with you?
Wonder Weddings plans and runs weddings in Wānaka and the wider Southern Lakes. If you would rather talk it through than read another guide, start there.
Planning and photography by Wonder Weddings, in the same group as this guide.
This guide is written, maintained and funded by Wedding Machine Group, founded by Cristian Batista. Enquiries sent from this site go to Wonder Weddings, the planning and photography brand in the same group, and some readers become its clients. Heli Elopements and Eureka Films are also brands within Wedding Machine Group, sister companies, not independent recommendations.